Hold Me For Respite
by you-have-me
Summary: Sharon/Andy est. couple: After a long week at work, Sharon heads round to Andy's to make sure he's ok. Finding him asleep gives her the time to think about how where they are in their relationship and the delights of comfort. (Hopefully the story's a lot better than this summary...)


**A/N - I was so overwhelmed by all the lovely reviews for my first story - thank you guys so much! This was knocked out very quickly and ended up being completely different to what I intended so sorry for any mistakes. I also realised that it's another story with these guys lying down...I'll aim for more vertical next time.  
****yhm x**

He's lying on his couch when Sharon walks in through the front door.

She smiles, biting her bottom lip to stop from chuckling as she shucks her heels and hangs her coat. His head's half-turned into the pillow propped up on the arm, his body at a half-angle toward the low-volume television set. She's not laughing because he looks adorable (although he does and she frequently has to stop herself from telling him so when she sees him like this), his mouth slightly open and one hand resting on the soft, slight paunch of his belly. No, she's laughing because he's lying as if she's already there. His top leg is even slightly bent as though poised to raise and wrap itself over hers. She shivers pleasantly, anticipating the warmth of his thigh on hers.

The hall clock chimes three and Andy stirs but doesn't wake. Instead, as she pads her way behind the couch and gently toward the kitchen, she watches him as his hand falls onto the vacant space in front of him and he grumbles.

"_You're such an old man_," _she says as he mumbles something that sounds like 'nap time' in her ear._

"_Don't tell me you don't take naps when you have the apartment to yourself. I know you better than that, Raydor."_

_She hums and he pulls her closer, his hand splayed across her belly possessive and protective. Suddenly he tickles her and she shrieks, clamping one hand over her mouth (out of no other reason than habit) and slapping his wriggling hand with the other._

"_Okay, okay – stop it! Flynn! Andy, no, I said s-stop! Don't make me order you!"_

"_Maybe I like it when you order me, Captain" and a kiss, so soft, drops behind her ear._

"_Lieutenant, I swear to G-God, if you don't – okay, okay, give, I give!" She turns to look up at him and, though hazy_ _without her glasses, the look of tenderness in his eyes makes her swallow hard. He brushes her messed up hair out of her face and cups her jaw. She smiles before conceding: "Sure, okay, maybe I like naps too. Maybe."_

_He laughs, stroking her arched eyebrow. "See. When I'm right, I'm right."_

The hiss of the boiling water brings her out of her reverie and she goes about preparing her tea, grinning at the many flavours that greet her as she opens the cupboard door. She's begun to notice things like that – items that have crept into each other's homes surreptitiously until they're there, embedded in her everyday life, leaving her to question how either one of them ever made it to detective in the first place. She likes it though, finding his socks in her laundry, his chips and dip in with her hummus and wheat-thins (and Rusty sure doesn't complain about that either). It all feels momentous, these little things, and it thrills her that none of it scares her.

She's even taken to leaving some of her yoga pants in the drawer with his boxers, folded up with a house-cardigan of hers and next to his old Dodgers shirt that she likes to sleep in sometimes.

"_God, Sharon, it's ridiculous, I know, but put a gun to my head and I still don't know if I could pick between you naked and you naked but for my Dodgers shirt."_

The pillow she'd thrown had caught him smack in the face and he'd chased her round the bed until she'd pinned him beneath her, rolling him after he'd thrown her on the mattress.

"_Guess I should be grateful you don't carry that beanbag gun at all times, huh, honey?" _He'd grinned, that goddamn lopsided grin of his that she knew she mirrored, that he knew would make her kiss him.

"_Don't think I don't know that you still have that bag in your desk drawer, Lieutenant."_

He'd never explained that to her, why it was so important to him to keep it. She knows where it is though: top drawer, next to all the photos he knows better than to put on his desk. Her favourite of those is the one that she has her own copy of – the two of them in the park with Rusty, Nicole, Dean and the kids. In it, Sharon's laughing, much harder than she's remembered laughing in a long time, as the boys wrestle with Rusty – _her boy_, she smiles – and Andy has his jacket around her shoulders, just leaning back and looking at her. It makes her feel wanted (_and loved, Sharon, it makes you feel loved_) and she's missed that.

She toys with the idea of getting changed into the comfier clothes so she can join him on the couch, but a mid-afternoon, mid-week nap feels decadent enough to her without the added bonus of looser clothing. Besides, she's only in a t-shirt and jeans; it's not like she's come straight from the office.

The tea's cooling fast as she sips it pensively, her light mood shifting as she contemplates the week they've all had. The case was hard (_is there ever an easy one?_): a young dead mother, a missing child, a father drowning in debts and spirits. They'd all pushed themselves to the limits on it, working all hours, barely breathing outside of the details on the white board and the leads born out of the interview room. Finding the little boy _alive _late last night had been a blessing; arresting his father's bookie for murder and kidnapping had been draining, emotionally and mentally.

Looking down at him from behind the couch, she's pleased to see he looks peaceful in sleep. She's watched him all week, knowing that it's cases like these – cases that flag his own addiction as not only a weakness but as culpable in the destruction and suffering of a family – that hit him the hardest. He's been mostly stoic, only losing it once in the interview room, but they've barely had chance to talk. Instead, it's all just been weak smiles and nods of reassurance keeping them going until they could send their private texts.

_Maybe I'll get the Dodgers jersey after all_.

Everything is wonderfully familiar in his bedroom, from the three-piece suit folded neatly on top of the laundry hamper to the socks balled up on the floor next to it. The jersey's not where it usually is, mind, and it takes until she goes to place her overnight bag next to the bedside table for her to notice the sleeve of it poking out from under the pillow. The pillow on her side of the bed.

She throws her t-shirt on top of his suit, remembering as she lifts it off of her how it felt to have his knuckles brushing her sides that first time. The jersey had been a joke the next morning, the first thing she'd grabbed on the way to join him in the kitchen for breakfast. Now it's here under his pillow (_her_ pillow) smelling of fabric softener, her perfume and his cologne. It's a heady mix and she cherishes it as she pulls it over her head as she walks back down the hall.

Back in the lounge, she stands for a moment, just taking him in. He'd called her after they'd gone home, paperwork finally done, and they'd spoken about the relief of it all.

"_I'm going for a meeting in the morning."_

_It's still so unique to her to hear him talk about his alcoholism like that, to say that he needs that meeting and to know without doubt that he'll go. She can only remember Jack saying he was heading to one when she was throwing him out or crying or he was trying to worm his way back in. She'd always needed to hear him say it as much as he didn't want to._

"_Okay, sure. Do you want me to pick you up and drive you and then come back with you or -?"_

"_No, Sharon, sweetheart. I appreciate it, I really do, but it's been a long week and it wouldn't kill you to catch up on some sleep. Lie in bed, be a lady of leisure, see the kid. Then you could come on over in the afternoon and I can get some proper food back into that body of yours. Can't promise I'll be in anything hotter than sweats, though."_

"_Honey, with you, I take it as it comes on a daily basis."_

_The sound of his chuckle, rich with affection, is music to her ears._

She settles carefully next to his feet, running her finger lightly down his calf. The sound of the front door going or the clock chiming do nothing to him, but this, this stirs him and, inexplicably, she wants to kiss him just for that.

Andy stretches cat-like, looking down the length of his body at her, sighing into a smile.

"Hey you."

She leans forward to peck at his forehead, tapping his thigh pointedly. "Your front door was open," she chastises.

"For you," he mumbles. "Hey, s'nice. My favourite," he smiles at the shirt, trying to pull her down to him but she's back upright before his brain can get his limbs to work. "Time is it?"

"Not long after three."

"Perfect. Get on down here." And he lifts his arm from the space it had taken possession of earlier, inviting her to occupy it as usual.

"Andy! Taylor's given us two days – two _entire_ days – off and you just want to _lie down_?" The shudder that runs through her at the feel of his fingers nimbly, mischievously, slipping beneath her t-shirt to stroke her hip surely rules her glare over her glasses as obsolete.

"Damn right! I've had enough of the outside. It can _stay_ outside. I just want to lie down here, with you, and forget the outside for a little while. Now come here before I drag you here."

The smile on his face is getting bigger but she can see the tiredness in his eyes, can feel it in her own bones. There had been no real intention to leave his bungalow at all, just the urge to check his mood. As tempting as it had been to fall down on him the moment she walked through the door, if he'd have raised his head and looked to the porch she'd have walked right back out with him.

Instead, gratefully, she removes her glasses and places them carefully next to his, smirking at him when she sees they're resting on the sports pages. He tugs at the waistband of her jeans and gestures with his other hand.

"I'm coming, I'm coming. Hold you horses, Lieutenant."

Sharon had never really considered Andy as so emotionally vulnerable before she'd joined Major Crimes, let alone before they'd begun…this. Sure, he'd been hauled into her IA offices countless times over the years, and it didn't take her own personal experiences with Jack to understand why, but he'd never once struck her as the kind of man to be so intimate, to need the constant reassurance that there's someone there for him and that they feel for him what he feels for them.

When she's down next to him she kisses him once, twice, three times before turning so her back's against his chest and his nose is in her hair, lips pressed through to her neck. The tight hold on her is the only sign that he needs her here – _really _needs her here.

"How was the meeting?"

He flinches, so softly that she almost misses it. Still, his fingers work their way up under her shirt and dance on her stomach, spreading so hers can entwine with them.

"Hard. Helped though. I needed it."

Three words and he is everything Jack isn't.

"I'm glad it helped."

It's so open and matter-of-fact and strangely simple that she feels oddly proud, that she is somehow finally having what she anticipated an adult relationship to be. The weight of the ease is a thing of beauty to her.

A brief squeeze of his hand and she turns, their joined fingers now clasped between their chests. The coarseness of his stubble grazes her temple, the dryness of his sleep-smacked lips making sure that the kisses dropped upon her cheekbones are featherlight. His spare hand grips her hip and pulls her even closer and she imagines that there's an angle here where they might look like they're dancing. It makes her grin into him; that is, after all, how this started, all that time ago at Nicole's wedding.

She's felt the palms of his hands and the pads of his fingers, the soft circling of his thumb and the pull of his nails, all on her back countless times and in countless ways since that first waltz. As she feels the soft caress from the base of her spine to in between her shoulder blades the tension dissipates and she marvels. Noses touching, breathing each other in, the taste of the last week finally ebbs away. Instead, there is just the comforting feeling of shared baggage and sleep. His eyes – his greatly expressive deep brown eyes – flutter with the lust of it and for a moment she thinks he's drifted off again.

Then a mumble, so barely there. A whisper from his lips across hers.

"This helps too."

A kiss.

When he's right, he's right.


End file.
